I'm confused. It appears you now advocate not upgrading if the SQL version is less than eight years old -- SQL2008R2? Forgive me, but I didn't read that...

The latest series of posts you enjoy so much from Microsoft says:

I can’t emphasize this patch enough. There is a MSVC, runtime library patch needed by SQL Server...

There are additional considerations for .net developers. See

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1334143/sql-server-datetime2-vs-datetime

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8421332/for-the-net-datetime-type-why-is-the-inferred-database-type-sqldbtypes-datetim

Specifically, .net assumes datetime when adding a sqlParameter, and known legacy issues due to odbc style drivers and anything prior to .net...

100% physical, on SQL 2005. This is a manufacturing plant, where the devices that integrate w/ the database are legacy and are not going to upgrade.

Thanks Steve. I agree, stack ranking is idiotic for high-performing teams and only serves to drive away talent.

The article failed in that it set up the conflict, but didn't resolve: so, Steve, how did you rank your employees? Did you unfairly assign a 2?

I just had this exact problem, where the SQL Agent account was a domain account. Problem turned out to be somehow permissions got yanked for that account. The...

I've done this myself, but within a vb.net program that also generates vb code to treat it as a model. I believe later versions of Visual Studio provide this...